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I've Never Been Mistaken for Brad Pitt

I've never been mistaken for Brad Pitt. Not once. Neither has
anybody ever stopped me on the street only to look disappointed,
apologize and say, "I'm sorry, I thought you were Johnny Depp." It just
never happens. There's a reason for this. Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp are
remarkably handsome guys (says I in a totally heterosexual way). While
we all know that, at least to some extent, beauty is in the eye of the
beholder, there is no doubt that, at least culturally, there is some
standard of what makes a person beautiful or exceptionally handsome.
Depp and Pitt fit the mold quite well. I, like most others, decidedly
do not. Some concerned therapist may write me concerned that I do not
have healthy body image or some other pyscho-mumbo-jumbo, but I'll
assure him that I'm doing just fine, thank you. I know who I am and I
know what I'm not. And I'm no Brad Pitt.

What is remarkable to me is that Aileen, who (thankfully) seems to
have no irrational and deep-rooted crushes on movie stars, can still be
perfectly content with me, with my not-so-chiseled-chin and my
I-know-they're-under-there-somewhere-abs. This is, in my books, a good
thing. Her love is blind in all the right ways and I'm the grateful
beneficiary.

A couple of days ago I was driving around Los Angeles (in a hybrid
car, mind you—how CA-cliché is that?) with a couple of friends (neither
of whom look like Pitt or Depp) and we began to discuss celebrity
culture within the church and the tough task of any but the absolute
best preachers. I don't think we can rationally deny that there is some
serious celebrity culture in the church today, and even (or perhaps
especially) within this New Calvinism. Whether this has always been the
case, I do not know. But I consider it undeniable that, for good and/or
for ill, it is a powerful force today. And those who face the tough
task of forever "competing" with the brilliance of these celebrity
preachers are the ordinary pastors who serve at churches just like
yours.

Christians today have access (via the Internet, of course) to vast
libraries of the best sermons by the best preachers—the Pitts and Depps
of the preaching world. Of course in place of square chins and rippling
abs are amazing abilities to communicate lucidly, to illustrate
lavishly, to speak passionately, to exposit brilliantly. These are men
who, by any objective measure, stand head and shoulders above the crowd
just as Depp and Pitt do above me. They are men who are extraordinarily
gifted by God and who have been faithful to use their gifts for his
glory. I certainly do not wish to speak ill of these men who are such a
gift to the church.

But where my wife remains content with her husband, I see so many
Christians who struggle to be content with their pastors. And why is
this? Because all week long, these people are drinking from another
cistern, to borrow a phrase from Proverbs (5:15). They are doing the
equivalent of a wife who spends her week plastering her home with
posters of movie stars and staring at them greedily. How can her
husband hope to compete with those ridiculously good-looking guys? And
many Christians today listen to their pastor on Sunday and then listen
to fourteen sermons by fourteen pastors before the next Sunday comes
around. And, more often than not, their own pastors' sermon pales in
comparison. Little wonder that we see increased cases where small-time
pastors find themselves simply copying the top dogs, plagiarizing the
brilliance of other men. Haven't we almost driven them to this?

The fact is, God has put us in churches with less-than-perfect and
often less-than-brilliant pastors. The fact that there are
extraordinary preachers tells us that there must be vast numbers of
perfectly ordinary pastors. This means that most of us have been
blessed by God with a very ordinary kind of pastor, just as most of our
wives have been blessed by very ordinary-looking husbands. These men,
these ordinary pastors, are the ones to whom we owe our loyalty. They
are the ones to whom Paul refers when he tells the church at
Thessalonica "to respect those who labor among you and are over you in
the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love
because of their work." These are the men God has given to serve you
and to labor as pastors before you. It is through these men that God
means to specially bless you in that unique body called the local
church.

I do not mean to say that we ought not listen to podcasts or that we
have to pretend that the extraordinary pastors do not exist. We can
listen to their sermons and enjoy their great giftedness in teaching
the Word of God and in calling us to live in light of it. But through
it all we must guard our hearts. You would not want your child to be
parented by another mother and father, paying lip service to you but
giving his heart to others. You would not want to see that look in your
wife's eye, that disappointed, disgruntled look, after she has spent
her day staring at posters of movie stars. And you need to guard your
heart that you do not inadvertently turn it over to a pastor who is not
your own, a pastor who in any measure you care to see, is superior to
your own.